1. Technological Field
The present disclosure relates generally to the field of delivery of digital media data (e.g., text, video, audio, image files, and/or data files such as executables or other data structures) over data delivery networks, and specifically in one exemplary aspect to apparatus and methods for controlling selectable degrees of access of end-user devices to data delivery networks.
2. Description of Related Technology
In many public and private locations/venues, such as e.g., sports arenas, conference centers, hotels, concert halls, airports, etc., wireless networks are provided for connection of end-user devices (e.g., mobile and/or personal computing devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, etc.) to data delivery networks, including unmanaged networks such as the Internet. Such wireless networks may typically employ, e.g., access points (APs) and other infrastructure compliant with one or more IEEE 802.11 standards (so-called “Wi-Fi”). Such provided wireless networks, however, have a limited degree of access and/or consumable bandwidth capacity that can be made available to the users. Moreover, in such locations, there are potentially thousands of users that may attempt to access the provided wireless networks via their personal devices, sometimes at or nearly at the same time (such as where an event occurs, and the wireless users wish to engage in reporting or social media communications regarding the event). Among the pool of users, it may be desirable allow a selected group of users to have a greater degree of access (e.g., greater permissible bandwidth consumption, “head-of-the-line” privileges for the same amount of bandwidth as others, etc.). For example, some subset of the larger group may have valid reasons for requiring such enhanced access (e.g., the types or quantity of information they are sending or receiving may dictate a greater share of available bandwidth, and/or such head-of-the-line privileges due to e.g., urgency or time sensitivity).
Moreover, in that most users of wireless (and in fact other) networks typically are quite asymmetric in their uses (e.g., download bandwidth demanded is typically prevalent over upload bandwidth demanded), extant networks will often allocate more available network and backbone bandwidth to downstream channels for e.g., download, so as to mitigate user delays and loss of user experience. However, the foregoing paradigm may not be applicable in all cases, and in fact, situations may exist where required upstream/upload bandwidth (including that from multiple wireless users to one or more base stations or access points) far outstrips the downstream/download bandwidth, especially at fairly discrete points in time.
Without proper management of network access and parameters relating thereto, such scenarios as noted supra can result in the wireless access corollary of a “traffic jam”; access granted to only a subset of users in e.g., “first come, first served” fashion, with significant bandwidth limitation on each of the users who are lucky enough to obtain access. Clearly, the foregoing approach is not optimal, and results in significant user frustration, especially with the user's service provider.
One current solution for providing a sufficient degree of network access to a selected subset of a larger group of users is to exclude other (non-selected) users from network access. For example, a network can be password protected and the password distributed only to the selected group. These strategies may thus in certain cases provide a necessary degree of access to the selected group of users, yet none of these conventional solutions allows for, inter alia, other users to have a lower degree of access (e.g., access that does not interrupt uplink and/or downlink usage of the selected group of users) to the data network.
Additionally, any extant solutions that could address the foregoing problems require significant “intelligence” at the wireless access point or further up into the supporting distribution network; i.e., the wireless access point must be able to conduct evaluation of the requesting user device and/or user account, which necessitates use of a more complex device, and greater analytical capability in “sniffing” or examining packets and various aspects of the content or other data being transmitted or received by the requesting user (e.g., at higher layers within the protocol stack of the WAP or any associated controller). For example, were access privileges to be determined based on user ID or credentials alone, traffic associated with that user could not be easily identified, especially by a comparatively “dumb” wireless access point (WAP) or controller, and hence would require significant additional signaling and overhead to process selected or high-priority user requests or traffic, such as in maintaining QoS for traffic of the user.
Based on the foregoing, it is clear that while prior art solutions have generally recognized the need for providing network access to a selected group from a pool of users, there is a need for apparatus and methods that provide a greater degree of data network access (e.g., a greater uplink/downlink bandwidth), and control and configurability thereof, to a subset (e.g., selected group) of users, such as within a specific location/venue where many users are aggregated. In certain cases, it would further be desirable to provide a “best effort” degree of data network access (e.g., in some instances, a lesser uplink/downlink bandwidth depending on availability of the network) to other users within the same location/venue as well (as contrasted with provision of a high level of service to the “selected” users, and little or no service to others).
Ideal solutions would also be compatible with standardized hardware/software/operating systems, and be able to be implemented quickly with low development and resource overhead.